Crockpot Pork Shoulder Roast

Last night’s local feast featured a pork shoulder roast from our friend Nate, mashed potatoes made with Gary Bye’s Pontiac reds and local (Burbach’s) milk, plus some applesauce I’d canned last year from an abandoned apple tree in the neighborhood.

The roast was maybe three pounds, bone-in, and it was still a little frozen from having just been taking out of the freezer the night before.  I sliced some onions and layered them on the bottom of my crockpot, put the roast on top, then whisked together a sauce of grainy mustard, crabapple jelly (my own, of course), and a little veggie stock.

The sauce got poured over the top of the roast, and I cooked it on high for maybe four hours, then turned to low for another hour or two.  If your roast isn’t frozen, you might turn it down sooner.  I did baste the roast a couple times, and I turned it over about halfway through cooking, but you can pretty much leave it alone if you want.

When I served it, I ladled a little of the sauce with onions over the top of the potatoes–just a little for flavor, as it was pretty fatty from the meat cooking in it, and I didn’t want to try to make gravy.

The crockpot is my go-to for dinner when I’m busy with work, but know I’m going to want something hearty for dinner at the end of it all.  I’d never made a pork shoulder before, but I like that mustard flavor with virtually any pork product, and the addition of fruit is always good, too.

I would definitely make this recipe again–H must have said “Mmm” about seven or eight times in the process of eating it.  That’s all the encouragement I need.

 

Eatin’ Good in the ‘Hood

There’s no question that my neighborhood is home to more than its share of excellent cooks.  Whether its Jason of the weekend breakfast bonanza or John of the sourdough loaves and chocolate chip cookies, or (if I do say so myself) my local food fetishism.

Shall I just come right out and say it?  I’ll bet I eat better than you.  Maybe not as elaborately as you; maybe not as expensively as you, but damn, we sure do eat well around this house.

I’ve been making heartier fall meals lately–the weather is cooler, and even though I’ve been spending way too much time inside staring at a computer screen, I have managed to burn some calories walking the dog down to the park in the afternoons to justify the meals I’ve eaten and am going to tell you about in a moment. But first, Vega.

Vega is no lap dog.  Well, she will be if you let her, but her 94 lb. body is a bit big for sharing a spot on the furniture.  She’s also a devil on a leash–as well-trained as she is to stop (most of the time) at our borders when chasing cats out of the yard, I’ve never gotten her to heel worth a darn.

As a result, walking her generally required a visit to the chiropractor the next day. But I picked up this slick $10 no-pull harness the other day, and it’s amazing what a good dog she is.  The improvement in her good dogginess is almost as big as when I finally broke down and got a flip-top trash can.

Anyhow, besides sitting in front of my screen and walking the dog down to the park yesterday, I also managed to make an amazingly good root soup.  First, I chopped and roasted carrots, celeriac, parsnips, and a couple small onions with cinnamon, nutmeg, garlic powder, marjoram, salt and pepper with some butter and EVOO.

Then I caramelized another small onion and a handful of sliced leeks before adding several diced potatoes to the pot along with a stock made from the leek tops (I am drying the rest of the leek bottoms).

Once I’d cooked the potatoes to tender perfection, I stirred in the roasted (and slightly caramelized) roots, then pureed the whole thing with a bit more leek stock.  I threw in a dollop of yogurt as well, and added a few more of the same spices as I saw fit.

The result is a hearty soup of an almost porridge-like consistency–perfect for fall and winter evenings and for lunches on days (like today) when you finally drag your sorry butt outside to rake the leaves and do the fall clean-up (along with the summer clean-up you never got to).

Local ingredients: my parnsips, carrots, celeriac, leeks, and onions; Gary Bye’s Yukon Gold potatoes.

But wait! There’s more!

Tonight seemed like a good night for a hearty and slightly more complex meal–I spent much of the day out doing yardwork, and I wanted something special.  Knowing I still had a little ricotta cheese in the fridge, and knowing we haven’t eaten pasta in awhile, I decided on a lasagna.

The sauce was made with grassfed beef, my home-canned tomato sauce, and a few veggies–sweet red pepper, celeriac leaves, onions.  I added herbs, of course, and cooked it down to a not-to-thick consistency (because I was not cooking the pasta in advance).

The cheesy layer was the leftover ricotta, plus a dollop of plain yogurt, a forked-apart chunk of Dimmock Dairy’s cheddar-blue cheese, and a few rounds of cooked squash that didn’t fit in the freezer bags, and an egg.  I used Bionaturae organic whole wheat pasta.

I added a little red wine & water around the sides before I put it in the oven, and had it covered with foil for the first forty-five minutes or so to cook the pasta.  The first fifteen minutes, I cooked it at 425; then I turned it down to 350 for the last forty-five.

Not only was this tasty tonight, but the leftovers will be great for lunch tomorrow, when it’s actually supposed to be pretty warm out–meaning I’ll be back messing around in the yard instead of indoors cooking.

Local ingredients: my tomato sauce, celeriac leaves, peppers, basil, onions, squash; Dakota Harvest’s grassfed Dexter beef; Dimmock Dairy cheese; Justice’s egg; Evergreen Farms garlic.

And yes, there’s still more.

Even though I threw a little squash (Neck pumpkin, actually) into the lasagna filling, I still had a bit left.  I didn’t think I could tackle a whole pie tonight after everything else I’d accomplished (or didn’t, but at least started), but custard is easy enough!

Into the blender went 2 eggs, about 3/4 cup milk, and maybe 2/3 cup squash, plus various spices.  And now it’s–OH Crap!  I Forgot the sugar! Just a minute…(yes, please take this time to chide me about my bragging above)

OK, NOW it’s cooking for maybe 45 minutes at 325 in a water bath in the oven–luckily it wasn’t cooked enough yet that I couldn’t whisk about 1/3 cup sugar in there.  Whew!  If I hadn’t been typing this, I wouldn’t have remembered!

The custard is going to go alongside a little scoop of not-local-at-all Hagen Das Fleur de Sel caramel ice cream.  If you haven’t tried it yet–don’t.  I don’t want anyone else eating up all the best ice cream in town.

Local ingredients (in the custard): my squash, Burbach’s milk, Justice’s eggs.

 

Simple Late Summer Casserole

In tribute to the BlogHerFood 2009 convention in San Fran (which I am missing here in SoDak), I’m whipping up a late-summer casserole of thin-sliced zukes, tomatoes, sweet red peppers, and shavings of yellow onion.

It’s a pretty simple prep and a lovely dish: oil the casserole with EVOO, then start slicing–grating a bit of Asiago between every few layers–a little salt and pepper, some rubbed-between-the-fingers dried oregano. I started the bottom layer with zukes, as they’re the most stable.

You can use your food processor to make it quick n’ easy, but tomatoes don’t tend to survive that process well and peppers are kind of ungainly to go through the chute, so I just did it all by hand.  It’d be worth breaking out (and cleaning) the food processor just for the zukes if I was doing more than one.

Once it was all layered and lovely (I did three layers–could’ve done twice that), I drizzled a bit more EVOO over the top, covered with foil, and am baking at 350 for 30 minutes or so (I turned on the oven when I put it in).  Once the timer shouts, I’ll pull it out of the oven, pull off the foil, and heat up the broiler.

The topping will go on then–a mixture of fresh sourdough breadcrumbs, grated cheese (I had to switch to Parmesan–out of Asiago), and a little EVOO and back into the oven it’ll go to brown on top.  Yum!

 

Autumn: Soup’s On!

Despite my marathon tomato-soup canning seminars of late, the point of those sessions was simply to deal with the excess of produce and to put it by for the later, colder months–not to eat on a present-day basis (though H and I did eat the last of the second batch for breakfast this morning).

But the weather is changing, and the days are cooler and overcast.  It’s time to make soup, as the kids say these days, for realz.

I’d dug a couple of leeks from the garden a few days ago, and those went simmering into butter in my stockpot.  Rummaging through my crisper drawer, I found a couple of early-dug parsnips that I thought I might try to enter in the Clay County Fair, but couldn’t find three that were uniform enough.

Add to that some carrots I got from Gary Bye at the farmers market (I haven’t dug mine yet, and I don’t think there’ll be many), a sweet pepper that has been sitting in the basket on my table, turning red, and celeriac leaves for a nice flavor.

Then the potatoes–I’ve been storing up potatoes for the last couple of months–some of my fingerlings that will have to be eaten in a short time, then Gary’s Yukon Golds for mid-term storage, and his red Pontiacs for long-term storage.

This soup got a dozen or so of the Yukons–unpeeled and chopped with just the eyes pared away.  It’s now all together and simmering on the stove–by dinnertime, the veggies will be meltingly tender and the flavors will have developed fully.

 

Sesquecentennial Pancakes

If you’re in Vermillion this week, it’s hard not to notice how busy our otherwise sleepy summer town has become with the culmination of the Sesquecentennial bash and the VHS all-school reunion festivities.  This morning there’s a parade, and last night I accompanied H to a dinner at the Eagles for an eight or nine year span of classes.

In honor of the parade this morning (and to get some breakfast in M’s belly before and in case candy is tossed from the floats), I made whole grain oatmeal pancakes.  I’m also suffering from digestive derailment from my brush with West Nile or whatever that was, so my diet (besides last night’s bean-and-tavern feed–oh, my belly!) has been tending toward grain and fruit.

The original rule for these pancakes comes from the Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, though I have made a number of modifications since I first made them in 2002 in the kitchen of Freemans’ old farmhouse on Frog Creek Road, where I found the cookbook in their incomparably delicious-smelling pantry.

The basic recipe: Soak one cup of oats in 1 1/4 cup of milk for at least 15 minutes.  Add two beaten eggs, a tablespoon of oil, then mix in the dry ingredients: 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, 1 tbsp brown sugar, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt. Drop by big spoons-full onto a hot buttered griddle, flipping when the underside gets brown.

Since the original recipe makes pancakes that are very dense and heavy, I have taken to separating the eggs and beating the whites, folding them into the batter at the end to lighten the cakes up a bit.

I also tend to add about 3 tbsp of brown sugar instead of just one, as I like my cakes a little sweet, so I don’t have to use as much syrup. This tends to mean adding a bit more flour as well.

I also occasionally add in a mashed over-ripe banana (to the oat-milk mix) if I have one, and I almost always throw in a little almond or vanilla extract and some cinnamon, nutmeg, or both.

Even with the separated and whipped whites, these are a very sturdy pancake!  Those who have trouble with white flour pancakes and the accompanying late-morning carb-sugar crash will do much better on these.

Unless you are serving four people, you’ll likely have a few cakes left over, which to my mind is a bonus, as they make a nice little fold-over sandwich with some jam or cheese later in the afternoon–an oat cake with your tea!

I served the cakes with a drizzle of real Vermont maple syrup (M’s favorite) and for H and I–the slightly tart and very tasty cherry syrup I boiled down from last week’s canning project.

 

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Spent much of the day (after dropping M. off at summer art camp) in Yankton at the Organic Field Days there.  This is the first year for that event, so attendance wasn’t great, but we’ll do it bigger and better next year.  I gave two presentations–one on CSA and one on the economics of sustainable agriculture.

I also got to hear most of Rena Hebda’s presentation on their slow and deliberate transition to organic production. It sounds like they’re making a good effort over there in Mission Hill, and I took the opportunity to introduce myself and make the same case to her that I made to her husband over the phone: Come to our Market!

But they also have a CSA, and one of their delivery days is Thursday.  So, I suggested they consider us for next year.  I also met another grower from Volin who might be interested in coming next week with Sweet Corn!  It’s possible we’ll have a little for this week–but next week is the real deal from everything I’m hearing.

When I got back from Yankton, I had about an hour before I had to pick up M.  You’ve never seen a gal throw off the heels and scrub off the make-up faster than I did.  I went out to the farm for a little yesterday evening about seven, and the mosquitoes were so bad, I had to wear a head net just to do a (literal) run through the gardens.

I thought since it was earlier and hotter this afternoon, it’d be better.  Well, I wasn’t wearing the headnet, but DEET came into play–even in the heat and full sun.  I made the executive decision to do some harvesting this afternoon, so I wouldn’t have to donate quite so much blood tomorrow during the rest of the harvest.

The good news: summer squash is bearing in my gardens now.  I know everyone and their cousin has had it for a couple of weeks (remember: I planted later to break the bug cycle–no Sevin for me!), but much of what I am growing is the light green teardrop-shaped cousa (or cousa) squash–very pretty, very tender.

Better news is that sweet peppers are coming on–I’ll have about a dozen or so to sell tomorrow.  I stopped in Jones’ on the way home to check their prices–they’re getting a dollar apiece for some not-so-fresh-looking specimens (sorry, Dean, it’s true!).  Mine will be a much crisper and slightly cheaper seventy-five cents apiece.

The bad news: I am still not seeing any Monarch or Swallowtail caterpillars on the milkweed or dill or rue–either here at home or in the gardens.  Generally by now I’ll see at least a few–this year–absolute zero.  I have seen only one Black Swallowtail and one Monarch in the gardens this year. At home–one Monarch, no Swallowtails. Not good.

The ugly: Yep–there’s some late blight on the tomatoes.  It’s not widespread (yet), so tomorrow I’ll go out with pruning equipment and take out some plants–a pepper plant, a couple Principe Borghese tomatoes.

Some plants have a little, and I might try to save them by pruning with sterilized clippers.  A couple plants just need to go.  All the diseased foliage and plants will get tossed over the fence–far from my compost pile.  And next year, all the tomatoes get moved to a different garden.

Tonight’s dinner is a compilation of leftovers plus some extra veggies.  I made a baked chicken-and-rice dish last night to comply with M’s desire for bland foods, but tonight is going to be a little more veggie-full.

I’ve got a pepper I slashed with the knife during harvest (oopsy!), the smallest summer squash of the bunch, plus some broccoli side-shoots from earlier in the week.  There’s sugar snap peas left that need to be eaten as well.  And there’s a few pieces of the aforementioned chicken and some brown jasmine rice.

You know what I’m thinking, don’t you?  That sure sounds like fried rice!

 

Can’t Say as I Blame Them…

Yesterday, I went out to work in the gardens and found this:

Deer-damaged Lettuce

If you’ll notice, the first two heads of summer crisp look quite lovely (ready for tomorrow’s market, even), but the third–the top one? Eaten right off.

The deer had also got into the west garden and eaten the tops and leaves off a couple of bolting-to-seed Green Ice lettuce plants I was saving for seed.  So, I grumbled, and H. put up another wire, and I went about my work.

Last night–or maybe this morning after last night’s heavy rains–it found the butterhead.  While the summer crisp was good, the butterhead is by far the tenderest, most lovely lettuce ever created.  And the deer, having completely ignored my lettuce all season up to this point, gorged itself on my lovely little heads.

I grumbled again, and wondered why the new wire didn’t work, and I spread some crystals from a bottle of coyote urine animal repellent in the area.  While I’m against the idea of caging a coyote and collecting its urine, I got it from a friend who got it when a nursery was going out of business.  So, I’m using it up.

Meanwhile, I considered my options.  The deer wasn’t particularly thorough about eating the heads it destroyed, so I cut off all the damaged heads in the row (summer crisp, a romaine, and especially the butterhead), and washed them up for tonight’s dinner.

Butterhead Salad

When I started eating the salad of mostly butterhead, plus some tuna, roasted red peppers, tamari almonds, red onions, and bleu cheese (dressed simply with lemon, olive oil, and black pepper), I realized that it’s pretty hard to blame the deer for their taste. Butterhead is simply the best, most tender and delicious lettuce there is!

 

Soba Noodles with Sugar Snaps and Curried Yogurt Sauce

Around 5 or 6 ‘o clock in the evening, I start thinking about what I should make for dinner.  This time of year it involves poking around the fridge to see what veggies I thought to harvest and bring in from the country.

I don’t usually have a lot of veggies in the fridge because they’re best when fresh-harvested that day, but I wasn’t able to make it out to the farm to harvest anything today because my truck was in the shop. However, I did do a substantial picking of sugar snaps yesterday before pulling about half of the not-so-productive vines down.

Starting with that, a package of soba noodles, and a desire for both curry and creamy, I made the following dish:

Cook soba noodles according to package directions (making sure to take the little bands off before you dump the bunches in boiling water)–I used all three bunches in my package.

While they are cooking, mix 1/2 tsp garlic powder, one to one-and-a-half tablespoons curry powder (I used Penzey’s Balti–use what you like), a couple dashes of salt and liberal grinding of pepper in a small bowl–then add and mix in about a cup and a half of plain yogurt. IMHO, you are cheating yourself if you use anything but full-fat.

Drain the pasta, rinse with cold water, drain well, and mix the pasta with the creamy yogurt sauce. Then heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a frying pan on medium-high heat and throw in some chopped small spring onions (white parts–save the green parts for another use or for garnish). Let the onions just start to brown.

Then (after having removed the tops and strings), throw in about a cup of sugar snap peas and let them just get a tiny bit of brown spots on them before dumping in a can of diced tomatoes with most of their juice.

Turn off the heat if you have an electric stove–you can simmer for just a minute if you have gas. Don’t really cook the peas–they should stay crunchy. Dump the contents of the pea/onion/tomato pan over the pasta and toss.

You might also garnish with a little chopped cilantro–I did. Serve at room temperature–easy because combining the rinse-cooled noodles, cold yogurt sauce and hot veggies makes it a good temperature to serve–no need to eat super-hot food when it’s hot outside.

Serves two with some leftovers unless you’re farmer-hungry–four if you have something else to go with it.

Local ingredients: peas, onions, cilantro.

 

Classic Brats and Cabbage

A locally-made feast!

One head of spring cabbage, one or two summer onions, a couple tablespoons of butter, a bottle of your choice of beer, a package of Dakota Harvest lamb brats or Bluebird Locker’s South Dakota brats (4-6 sausages).

Heat oven to 350 degrees (or make a nice bed of coals). Chop the cabbage and onions and spread them in the bottom of a Dutch oven with a lid. Mix the cabbage and onions with caraway seed, thyme, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, bay leaf, and celery seed.

Dot butter over the top of the cabbage, lay brats on top of that, then pour the beer over all.  Put the top on the Dutch oven and cook all for about 45-minutes to an hour in the oven or over the coals. Serve with Dad’s Bakery or Mr. Smith’s sourdough bread, mustard, plus more of the beer you cooked with.

 

Pastry and other disasters

So, I was up early getting the kitchen cleaned up and quiches made for a Fathers’ Day honoring brunch for H. Daughters K & S will be here with their families, and then we’ll head over to K’s this evening for a dinner.

The brunch was a sort of consensus yesterday evening over at K’s (while my son M bounced on the trampoline and the rest of us took turns bouncing with him), and I mentioned that I had way too many eggs in the fridge, and should I make something with them to contribute to the dinner? That was out, but brunch seemed a better option.

So, up early in the pouring rain–put in a call to my own dad back in Vermont, who was fishing with my brother on Bristol Pond, then set to work making the pastry.  I pulled out the whole wheat flour and shortening, and filled a little glass with water and an ice cube.

As I was working the fat and flour together, my immediate brain thought something wasn’t right–there just seemed to be too much fat for the flour, even though I knew I’d measured correctly. So, I added a little more flour, completely ignoring the historical memory brain that was yelling, You Fool! It’s humid as a rainforest! You NEVER add more flour to pastry! Never!

Patted the pastry into a ball, wrapped in wax paper, refrigerated, and set about preparing the fillings: reconstituted dried morels and dried tomatoes, sliced onions, a little bit of lamb sausage, plus the eggs, milk, and herbs.  I was even thinking how I might be able to get three quiches instead of two out of that pastry ball because I’d so cleverly added the extra flour.

Those of you who know pastry are shaking your heads, knowing what came next.  I took the dough-ball out of the fridge, sliced it in half, and it fell completely to pieces.

“Crap!” I shouted.

Told you so, didn’t I? But you didn’t listen…, came the snide reply of my historical brain.

Well, we at Flying Tomato Farms are nothing if not prepared to make do with the results of our screw-ups (yes, that’s the royal “we”).  I patted and cajoled each crumbling half of pastry ball into a pie plate, using a bit of ice water to glue together the bits.  The pastry will be a bit “rustic,” but I think it’ll be edible, if a bit on the tough side.

After patting in the pastry, I laid slices of muenster cheese over the bottom of the shell, to further secure the pastry, and topped them with the aforementioned fillings before pouring in the egg mixture.  The third “quiche” will end up being a (crustless) frittata–I’ll start it on the stovetop, then finish under the broiler once the other two are out of the oven.

Well, the guests have arrived, and the quiches and frittata look fine.  The pastry is a bit thick, but not terribly tough, so I’ll call it a success and dig in!